


the clock strikes twelve

by eraserheadbaby



Category: Tales of Series, Tales of Vesperia
Genre: F/M, Unspecified Setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:47:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29591634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eraserheadbaby/pseuds/eraserheadbaby
Summary: She's reading a book of everything she will never understand.
Relationships: Yuri Lowell/Rita Mordio





	the clock strikes twelve

The tree is positively enormous, the petals shower like rain – it's the best hiding spot she could have asked for. So, surely it's safe for Rita to turn the page-

“I've never read books about blastia before, but whoa, do they look different than I thought! Look at these cute scribbles... and is that a unicorn?"

Okay, okay, she won't scream. She will just stopple her palpitating stomach and lungs and lift her head to look at what - at who - she already knows looms over her as she sits under the tree.

Having to look up at anybody is sheer humiliation, but that anybody being Yuri of all people is the biggest knife you could twist in the wound. And that goes double for grinning-at-your-expense Yuri.

“T-This isn't even my book! It's just... one of Estelle's stories...”

“Estelle writes... fairy tales, doesn't she?”. Oh, come on, he knows that already – he just wants to prolong her torture! “So you like that stuff?”

“I should burn you alive just for suggesting that.”

“Why are you reading this, then?”

For a while, Rita starts to doubt there's an answer to that. But she recalls her fingers bristling when she first held the colorful tome, the feeling spreading all along her arms and right into her chest after she started reading, and maybe that's where the answer lays.

“Don't you ever wonder what goes on inside the head of someone as pure as her?"

Though it's said so low that even she herself has a hard time making it out, Yuri seems to have heard her just fine. He stares at the reawakened tree, kicks the petals over and under his boots.

“I guess, but there's no avoiding the fact that I'll never understand, no matter how much I try”. No coveting, no remorse, nothing in Yuri's words seems to be lamenting this fact. “And you of all people get what I mean perfectly, don't you?”

He means the gold dust and the sleeping powder that she feels sticking to her palms with every page she turns; the words whose etymology and spelling make perfect sense to her, but whose existence is a riddle for her to begin with; the little drawings where the care and the tenderness are present in every turn of the ink yet she can only look at them stone-faced as she traces her palms over them.

She's reading a book of everything she will never understand.

“But hey, who knows! Read more of this and maybe you'll start thinking like that too”. The more Yuri speaks, the more his voice grates Rita's ears.“Maybe tomorrow I'll catch you writing about your own prince...”

The tree rains pink down on her, as her lashes quiver aristocratically, as her lips tremor with coy giggles and dreamy sighs, as she speaks of princes, of towers and rescued maidens, as Yuri is still a knight, as she swoons at his bravery.

The tree rains pink down on her, as her hands blot the leather-bound book with their impression of sweat and as they crinkle with charged destruction, as Yuri's sword hides its bloodstains between coverings. 

“Now you're just begging for a fireball on your face!” A page gets flipped after the crinkle of its paper. “And if I ever wrote about princes, I'd just have to write about the exact opposite of you.”

Yuri chuckles. “That goes without saying.”

What also goes without saying is that Rita would never know how to write about princes.


End file.
